Writing Introductions

My thinking has turned to Introductions, RPG style. A quick perusal of web advice has left me cold. Rob Lang's wonderful guide aside, blog entities, essays and abstracts dominate. Dominated by the Abstract, that's my problem.

From Rob Lang:

The introduction is likely to be the first thing that the reader will go to after the cover, so ensure it is fluffless. It must include the following:

·         What is in the book? System? Setting? Sample adventure?

·         What is the genre of the setting? What are the major themes?

·         What will the characters do?

·         what sort of mechanic is it (dice/diceless/pool)?

The first bit that may jump out is “fluffless.” Isn't an introduction exactly the place for fluff? What, oh what, could Rob Lang be smoking?

A bit more about Fluff from Mr. Lang appears later.

Fluff

Fluff is what I call any words or content that does not directly assist player or GM in playing the game. Fluff can appear in the following ways:

·         Examples that do not demonstrate meaningful bits of the system

·         A chatty style of writing can add hundreds of words.

·         Justifications of why a particular rule was chosen over another

·         Marketing speak about how revolutionary and epic the game is. It is ok to describe why it is different by over the top adjectives is fluff.

·         Over-elaborate detail regarding a small part of the setting

From this we can gather a furthering disdain toward Fluff. A veritable tempest is emerging! It is clear Mr. Lang is at war, a war against the useless, the inane, the rambling. What he wants is nothing more then the Mechanics, dammit, hack that fluff out! 

Part of me agrees but I still feel that if you printed and placed a game with a setting and one with an interesting mechanic next to each other, the one with the setting is more like to be played. Even if that setting is then butchered by the GM, generic mechanics leave me feeling a bit cold.

But behold what is this? Mechanics are lame, Setting is good!

Norse myth is a strong idea but without that setting, the GM has to do a lot of work to run the game. I think as a designer, you need to make the game as easy as you can to play and to do that you need a setting and a sample adventure.

You need to make the game as easy as you can to play. Maybe didn't leap right out on the first reading, but let it sink in a bit. But wait, how did we get off course? Isn't this rant against Rob Lang's crusade against fluff?

I'm not very good at describing fluff, except I know it when I see it. The introduction is a good place to give a feel for the setting, let me give you an example of what fluff is and what it isn't.

Fluff is...I created this setting because AD&D was boring to me and I wondered what would happen if dwarves had steam. Giant cities built on steam with punk elements in there too. So, a fantasy steampunk...

Fluff isn't...Deep in the bowels of the megapolis, amongst house size boilers live a underclass of dwarves...

It is clear to me what we have is a failure of communication. Typical guy, RPG's are broken into two things, fluff and mechanics. Everything not a rule is fluff. Fluff is the stuff that defines Tone, Setting, Premise. Rob Lang's world. Mechanics, The Good Stuff, and the stuffing. The bloated bits that impede understanding.

Another perspective. From Openings: Writing Effective Introductions by Kyle Cushman.

Introductions can fail when:

1.      A writer starts too far back (We moved to Michigan when I was five) rather than in the most important place (The day my father died changed everything). Donald Hall, in Writing Well, says, "We usually over-explain at the beginning of a paper and begin too far back…in discussing how World War II began, we can begin with the fall of the Roman Empire" (40).

2.      The writer blandly tells the reader what he or she is going to do: "In this paper I will discuss the bombing of Pearl Harbor. First I will…then I will…"Instead, show the reader what the paper will be about: "Many Americans gawked in disbelief as the bombs rained down on the beaches of Pearl Harbor. Had this moment really come to pass?"

3.      The writer indicates the essay will be about one topic, yet actually writes about a different topic. For example the writer may raise a question about the symptoms and treatment for anxiety in the introduction, but then spend the essay exploring how attitudes towards mental illness have changed in the last 50 years.

4.      The writer does not establish authority: "I don't know much about politics, but the trends in the last election were interesting."

5.      The writer never establishes a focus. There's an intriguing quote about deer hunting as the first sentence. The second sentence raises the question of wildlife management. The third sentence explains how the writer worked at the Department of Fish and Game for a few years after college. The last sentence brings up the issue of hunting coyotes.

More geared toward the technical, but several leap out.

• “A writer starts too far back.” A little vague, so let's paraphrase. When first introducing don't get bogged down! Bang first, explanation later.
• “The writer blandly tells the reader what he or she is going to do” Show, don't tell.
• “The writer never establishes a focus”. A scatter shot of ideas with no clear direction what to do with them. Or as Mr. Lang explained, “You need to make the game as easy as you can to play.”

Reexamining Mr. Lang's first list:

·         What is in the book? System? Setting? Sample adventure?

·         What is the genre of the setting? What are the major themes?

·         What will the characters do?

·         what sort of mechanic is it (dice/diceless/pool)?

All these are what the reader needs to know to play the game. What this book is, what is the premise, what is done with it, and how it is done. All of this is shown, bang first, in a focused matter.

Why?

Leave aside the necessary whoring of the actual game. What is left? To paraphrase, “You need to make the game as easy as you can to understand.” A good RPG introduction allows the reader to “get” the rest of the game as they read through the book. The game is introduced, not explained, not detailed.

If I read the introduction first, and the next chapter is character creation, the introduction will have done its job if I don't have the urge to skip ahead to figure out what my character is doing, why I want a high dice in a skill, or why I would want to be in a faction. These concept should have already been introduced to me. Latter, as I actually create a character, I will need to dwell in the details of the genre, mechanics, setting. On first perusal, though, I should know enough already and have no need to read ahead.

Make the game as easy as you can to understand.